Sunday, March 11, 2007

More Predictions

19 comments:

I was watching some of those beany and cecils on you tube,... I was impressed how good they looked, and the color was pretty decent.. when he was lifting weights and he had abs,.. funny stuff. I alos miss the old spumco sight, with the cartoons, I remember when anyone came to my house I would show them those cartoons. Great stuff! Just a compliment thats all.

AMEN! AMEN! That is a great article but I was curious if you still mean those things? For example about the bootleg Ren and Stimpy shirts that you collected. I have heard of some artists that get steamed up because they are selling merchandise that is clearly their and not getting a cut. Sure I would be flattered by it but when do you draw the line? Don't you have to eat? Then again what do I know!

By the way I was wondering if I could post some sketches you made for me John on my blog. As I may have said before your blog is really a breathe of fresh air compared to the crappy cartoons on TV today and may the internet toons rule!

I think the only flaw in the stated model you propose is that people still have to PAY for the spin-off cartoons. Speaking as one of the internet children, we probably won't pay for shit because we're bums. We'll find a way to bit torrent the episode, or any number of sneaky ways to pirate your toons.

HOWEVER, the television business model of revenue seems like it would still apply. Either you animate the commercial (like you propose) or you just preroll a commercial before the toon. If you're using something like Macromedia Flash, there's no way for a person to skip the cartoon. Ultimately, you'd have to track downloads and the companies would pay you per view. This is already used at sites like atomfilms, and some other places.

I plan on starting a site like this in the near future. Let's hope it works!

I had a couple of my cartoons picked up by Nick. They are talking about a series. I went to meet with the vice president. They were diggin my surreal ideas and humour... Just one problem..."Its not quite a Nick fit"

"you need to change here, here and here"

Once I had pumled and mashed my ideas into a 'Nick fit' as far as I would possibly allow myself to and the middle men had all put in their 2 cents in; the cartoons I had come to them with were unrecocnisable from their original forms. This didn't feel right.

I have decided to take it upon myself to get my cartoons out there...hopefully I'll be able to sustain myself doing what I have such a passion for. For a longtime I have always wanted to try the business model you've just been talking about, and reading this makes me feel more confident about it than ever. It makes sense to me :D

Hey John, are you the one that coded the easter eggs at the end of each Spumco cartoon? I'm curious as how that worked, I only know basic actionscript, IE loading bars, play, stop, stuff like that. I'm scratching my head over how you got your cartoons set up to know that the viewer found the secret, and to have something different play at the end of the movie.

It's not exactly too late for this one to come to pass. Eventually, every user will be his or her own programmer and choose what content to view and when. Single sponsorship programming may be a part of the new paradigm.

Hi John - I think that someone's paying attention to you. A form of direct sponsorship is starting to happen now in television with product placement and brand name mentions, as well as attaching the product name to sports events (ex: the Smuckers Stars on Ice Invitational). I think that manufacturers are realizing that with very few exceptions (like the Super Bowl), people don't watch ads.

To tim, who asked you about creating Easter eggs - if you know actionscript and you know how to make buttons, then you are on the right track for developing "Easter eggs" in Flash. Check out this link for some ideas on how to do Easter eggs in your cartoons. HTH.

Odd that you would use Spawn as a name drop. I was reading the first few issues the other day and it all seemed to lack many of the drawing principles you've talked about here. I still dig Spawn though.